I gave a slow, dramatic shake of my head, as if genuinely pitying her.

"If I’m going to be stuck in your body, we’re going to have to address this once more... design limitation."

Still, the victory of finally slipping free from that hold made the roast taste even sweeter. My shoulders ached, my back tensed from contorting in ways I’m pretty sure were not medically advisable, and my breathing was shallow from the effort. But at least now I could move, and more importantly, check what I needed to check without someone’s arms locked around me like a clingy octopus.

I glanced down. Kairi’s chest — medium, certainly serviceable — and I felt a laugh rise that I could not help being smug about.

Honestly. I muttered into the dark, cupping the borrowed breasts like a scientist making unrequested observations. "You have no idea how much volume and depth changes things," I said aloud to Kairi’s sleeping form. "Bigger breasts alter center of gravity, change balance, affect posture, and—don’t laugh—can be useful for thermal regulation and shock absorption. There’s leverage, presence. With mine, rooms listen. With these... people feel comfortable and underestimate you."

Yes, I was roasting my current chassis. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Now, sue me.

Complaining helps me gather mental energy after being strangled by familial affection.

Once I’d gotten the blood circulating back into my arms, I padded across the room on bare feet. The moonlight coming in through the curtains made everything look a little too sentimental, like the opening shot of some melodramatic coming-of-age anime. Which, given whose room this is, feels disturbingly appropriate.

I scanned the space — neat enough to pass casual inspection, but there’s a certain... curated chaos to it. That subtle layering of items that says ’I’m tidy but only where it matters to me’.

Then my eyes landed on it.

The shelf.

At first, I thought it was just those regular books. Then the colors, the spines, the ridiculous variety of fonts started to register — and I knew. I crouched down for confirmation, running a finger along the edges like a detective dusting for prints.

The covers ranged from brightly illustrated fantasy epics to... well, things with suspiciously smug-looking characters on them.

"...So this is where you hide your shame," I whispered, a grin tugging at my lips.

"A whole shelf dedicated to your so-called otaku habits."

I plucked one off the rack at random, flipping it open.

My eyebrows rose almost immediately. "Of course. Original. With the tiny print and the bonus art at the back. Kairi, you absolute closet nerd."

One corner had figures too — little resin statues, each posed in some unnecessarily dramatic mid-action scene. Sword swings frozen in time, hair sculpted like it had its own wind machine. The kind of stuff that makes convention vendors rich.

I set the book back exactly where I found it, mostly so I could hold this over her head later. "You strut around like you’re all practical and above it all," I muttered, "but deep down, you’re just one box set away from starting a shrine to your favorite protagonists."

Still, I couldn’t help but admire the meticulous arrangement. There was pride here, disguised under a blanket of plausible deniability.

Which, of course, made it all the more roastable.

Shaking off the thought, I headed for the shelf where I’d seen something earlier—something that might explain why this room felt... subtly different from my own workspace. My fingers brushed across the spines until one caught my attention.

It was heavier, bound in dark leather, with faint sigils along the edges. I pulled it free and opened it—only to blink at the handwriting inside the cover.

Do not touch unless you are Kairi.

I stared at it for a moment. Then, slowly, a grin crept across my face.

"Oh... so this is one of those books."

"But I’m Kairi, no?"

I muttered under my breath, grinning at my own joke as I cracked the book open.

...

Oh.

Oh no.

The grin froze.

Page one. And there it was.

Not a spell diagram. Not research notes. Not even a weird alchemy recipe.

The first thing that greeted me was not words.

It was skin.

A lot of skin.

The illustration wasn’t just nude — it was anatomically vindictive.

Two characters — one of them suspiciously similar to the man on the cover — were entangled in an arrangement I wasn’t sure had an official name, but definitely had an unofficial one somewhere in the darkest corners of a doujinshi convention.

And it wasn’t amateurish, either.

Every muscle, every shadow, every bead of sweat... drawn with the kind of care usually reserved for medical diagrams.

That... was not a sketch. That was a full, brutally detailed, couple-having-sex composition that could make even professional art judges forget how to swallow.

...There was even a signature at the bottom.

- Kairi Izumi

My eyes narrowed. "Wait... that’s Kairi’s handwriting."

A hot prickle ran up the back of my neck.

Do you...

Do you really want to do that with a male?

That thought arrived uninvited, like a drunk acquaintance at a funeral.

I shut the book halfway. Then reopened it. Then shut it again.

Why did I reopen it?!

Well, the shading—perfect. The anatomy—flawless.

The expressions—uncomfortably alive.

Whoever drew this understood muscle tension, subtle finger positioning, even the way skin folded. She’d only ever seen Helena attempt this kind of thing, and Helena’s work looked like dislocated mannequins in a fog machine compared to this.

Why? No—how?

I bit my lip. Okay, first question: how is Kairi this good at human anatomy? Second question: why is her male anatomy knowledge... this informed?

The lines were too clean to be hand-scanned. No, this was... 3D printed. Kairi had translated a drawing into a three-dimensional reference model before printing it out for maximum accuracy. That meant she’d not only drawn it—she’d modeled it.

Who does that?

My mind spun in quick succession: precise musculature → proportion accuracy → flawless human form → advanced medical-level understanding of the body.

I blinked.

Wait.

She was a doctor.